May 19, 2014 05:18 PM UTC

Clear Channel axes Colorado's liberal radio AM 760

• 6 Comments
• by: wade norris

I was astonished to find my local progressive station running the Bloomberg News. Here is what I found :

radioinsight.com/blog/headlines/88602/kkzn-denver-to-drop-liberal-talk/

 “AM 760” KKZN Thornton/Denver is next in line to shift to another Talk variation following similar moves in recent months at sister stations in Portland and Los Angeles…. Clear Channel registered RealTalk760.com last December that could potentially be used for KKZN. With the company also owning News/Talk/Sports 850 KOA and Conservative Talk 630 KHOW perhaps the company will follow in the footsteps of its Los Angeles and San Francisco clusters and move Rush Limbaugh off of KOA to enable it to focus on all local programming.

This is a shocking move for me, since we have an increasingly trending Progressive voter base in the state. And the article says 630 is the Conservative station in the area, but there are many others and 850 also runs conservative talkers too.

But that is not the only evidence, since I moved here in 2000, our state governance has gone from a Double Republican house and Senate, Republican Governor, Republican Senators,  and majority Republican Congressional Caucus to now being the opposite – Democratic Senators, Democratic majorities in legislature, and Majority Dem Caucus in Congress.
So what gives?  I can't believe that the Denver Metro Market can not sustain a liberal radio station. I mean Boulder is the Berkeley of the Rockies.

And I speak not only as someone who listens to the shows, but I also was on air as a progressive radio show host from 2007-2009.  And I can tell you – if there is not a radio station covering these stories – many times they won't get covered at all:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/02/617871/-Co-Sec-of-State-stealing-election-for-McCain?detail=hide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6AsDJe8bg
That interview with Colorado Ethics Watch – prevented a scheme by then Secretary of State Mike Coffman from disenfranchising THOUSANDS of newly registered voters in the 2008 election.

 

 

 

In mid-September he (Coffman) issued a memo to the County Clerks telling them specifically to not register anyone who does this.
Consequence: Thousands of new voters are attempting to register to vote, thinking they are successful because they signed up through some organization such as ACORN or any of the political parties, but are not registered and will not be allowed to vote if they do not correct their forms.

When I say thousands, I am not over-exaggerating. In Denver County alone (the only one I have numbers for so far) this ruling has resulting in approx. 3000 denied voter registrations! And that is just one county, and one with thousands of more forms to even look at!

ALSO:

  Secretary of State Mike Coffman broke the law last year by allowing his database manager Dan Kopelman to manage the database while he was running a Republican voter database company on the side. See story by Dan Whipple

    Coffman's State Elections Director was discovered to be staying at a loft owned by the software salesman who manages the Voting Machines for our state, machines that have already been de-certified, then re-certified by Coffman. She resigned pending an investigation, and it calls into question the veracity of our voting machine process.

 And Coffman himself ran for Congress that year when he was supposed to be supervising the election – several conflicts of interests.
At that time, I was working the Obama campaign and our team had personally registered many of these first time voters – and we were all concerned that a close race with Colorado going to the Republicans could have won it for McCain. Fortunately – the pressure we brought through rallies and covering it on Progressive radio and blogs forced caused a lawsuit to be filed and a judge ruled that the Sec. of State had over stepped his bounds.
Now Mike Coffman is in a Congressional Race vs. Andrew Romanoff – and it is the top watched race in the country for 2014.
So the story from 2008 is still relevant – if someone will be on air to cover it.
I can't help but think someone in the corporate news room is taking Liberal talk off air to favor Republicans in the mid terms and onwards.
It also seems that in a year when issues like controlling Fracking, Marriage Equality, income inequality, Marijuana legalization and other social and environmental issues are becoming increasingly majority issues – it would make since that these issues would be profitable to cover.
I would like to hear the community offer suggestions on a way to remedy this.